Page 63 of Embers of Midnight
It still stings.
I let air into my ribs and out again. The thread on my wrist is there if I need it. I don’t yet.
Ash is two rows over, fidgeting with a pen. Morrow and Silks are black ink on his skin today—wolf along the outside of his forearm, snake like a cuff at his wrist. They don’t move. He doesn’t need them to. He catches my eye once and tilts his chin: you good? I nod. He goes back to doodling knives and croissants in the margins like an overprepared gremlin.
A soft scrape at the window frame pulls my gaze. Vex drops a folded notice onto the sill—schedule change for Alchemy—and vanishes upward, all wings and attitude. The girl next to me startles. I don’t. I’m becoming a person who expects strange deliveries and drinks tea with men who run schools. Wild.
***
Draven’s extra session is in a side room that smells like canvas and cold metal. He sets a section of null-weave on a stand and walks me through the sequence like he’s teaching me to tie my shoes.
“Beads first,” he says, and shows me how to chill the anchor points without frosting the whole net. “Two seconds per bead. Cut between. No heroics.”
I mirror him. The weave shivers at the temperature change, then eases. The thread at my wrist sits against my pulse, silent metronome, not a leash. I cut between points the way he demonstrated, not fast, not timid.
“Step through,” he says. “Shoulders relaxed.”
I do. Nothing bites. Nothing zaps. My knees soften when I clear the edge. He marks the board with a check, simple as that.
“Weekly, same time?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, no hesitation.
“Good. You’ll log when dread shows up. Not to justify it. To work around it.” He ties off the net and sets it aside. “You are already doing the work. We’re removing unnecessary friction.”
“Thank you,” I say, and it doesn’t sound small.
He nods once, dismisses me with a look that lands like trust, not like a test.
Lunch is loud enough to feel safe. Ronan slides a bowl toward me. “Eat first,” he says, which is apparently his religion.
“Always this bossy?” I ask, hooking my pinky with his under the table because I can.
“When it comes to your blood sugar?” He arches a brow. “Yes.”
Darian’s knee presses against mine. Caelum peels a tiny ward sticker and smooths it onto the spine of my notebook like it’s nothing. “Dampens sudden clangor,” he murmurs.
“Like bells?” Ash says, too innocent. I kick his shoe and he grins, satisfied.
Someone a table over whispers something about “special training.” Ash raises his voice half a notch and tells Taya in graphic detail how I outsmarted a murderous net with nothing but a pretty wrist and the power of friendship. The whisper dies under the laughter that follows. I roll my eyes and let myself enjoy it.
Alchemy & Runecraft smells like alcohol and iron filings. Taya ties her hair up with a ribbon that could strangle a lesser person. Laz already has his camera out because he was born a menace. Cassandra floats along the back row with two girls who think she invented air.
We’re building a focusing plate—simple lattice, basic dampeners—and a stabilizing draught to seat it. The first fifteen minutes are blissfully normal. Taya and I fall into an easy rhythm. I measure; she checks lines; Laz mutters about exposure; the room hums with competent noise.
On the second set of tiles, something feels off. The rune in the corner isn’t wrong; it’s rotated. Ninety degrees. Enough to twist the function. Not enough for a novice to catch if they’re rushed.
I stop my hand. “Hold,” I say, too quietly for anyone but Taya to hear.
She freezes. I tap the edge and rotate the tile back into alignment. My glove takes a nip of heat for my trouble, a little blister along the side of my finger where the quick fix bit me.
“Shit,” I breathe, more annoyed than hurt.
“Got you,” Taya says, already spritzing the glove to cool it. Her eyes flick up, past my shoulder, and harden. “Laz.”
He is already moving, bagging the swapped tile with tweezers like we’re in a spy movie and he didn’t just spend last night losing at charades. He takes a quick photo of the girl from Cassandra’s duo “bumping” my tray with an apology smile that has no apology in it. Timestamp. Evidence. No scene.
When the bell rings, Caelum appears in the doorway like he happened to be there. He scans Taya’s face, then mine, then the tile bag, and nods once. “Good catch,” he says, to me, not the room. It lands like someone turned a valve and let my chest breathe.
